Sliding Into Apathy
by Piper Quinn
Summary: A Caleb story. Hate and rage must spring from somewhere, it will grow inside of you until you have reached breaking point. Then your heart and mind must accommodate and a darkness will tear at your soul. Slide into apathy, for love is a thing of the past.
1. Grey Areas

All credit to known characters goes to Joss Whedon and the many talented creators of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'. References to 'Something For Kate' lyrics and Tennessee Williams' 'Streetcar Named Desire' also included. No infringement intended.  
  
In this story I will delve into the mind of a homicidal maniac. Please bare with me as I try to remain true to Caleb's character, while keeping my own sanity intact.  
  
Piper Quinn  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------- Sliding Into Apathy. Chapter One.  
  
~*~*~*********~*~*~  
  
People are quick to use words. Words that do a person injustice. I have heard many, but I think few can describe me accurately. One, in particular.  
  
Misunderstood. That's what I like to call it, anyhow. I suppose that's what made me turn to God foremost. I needed people to hear me; I needed people to take my preaching into context. What better way then becoming a Preacher?  
  
It was as if the waters had cleared. People listened and learned, instead of just walkin' right by. I knew then it was my calling.  
  
I wanted to heal the wounds of the past. Not just mine, but other peoples. People who were just like me.  
  
I didn't think God himself had a plan for me, or that I would change the world, or nothin' like that, but goddamn, when they gathered and took heed I felt like the man upstairs himself. I was their God and they hung on my every word. I reveled in their nodding heads and sustaining expressions. And I knew I could reach them.  
  
I suppose things usually don't go as planned. Some may say I have strayed from the path; that I have abandoned virtue but I was never unfaithful. All I did was with the utmost faith and I found beauty, pain, denomination, heaven and hell. I found myself sliding into apathy, but I never did stray.  
  
My journey was long. I was built by it, but also twisted. Half my story is known, the other half still in shadow. I will share my story, hell I've been waiting so many years to do it. But there are things you must remember before I let you in on my secrets.  
  
Don't disregard the grey areas.  
  
Nothin' is black and white.  
  
Hallelujah.  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------  
  
When I first arrived at my first parish, a couple of miles out of Knoxville, I was just lookin' for answers. The two other priests were a good few decades older than me and I was young, eager, and ready to be enlightened. My decline from this submission, however, began at the first sermon.  
  
Father James Michaels. It just blew my mind how someone could be so uninspiring. His speech was nothin' but a skyscraper of procrastination and a bible passage. Father Laurence Jameson faring no better, his willowy frame bent over as though the man was too backward to even address the churchgoing people.  
  
This was not what I wanted. I wanted to learn and to teach. I wanted to show people the way. I wanted credence.  
  
I watched the people come and go. I tried to see change within them, to see if they had absorbed even a glimmer of faith. I failed to see either. I knew then that action had to be taken on my behalf.  
  
My mind wandered back to when I was just eight years old. My father had taken a gun to my mother and then to himself and I found myself to be all alone in this world.  
  
My father claimed to rarely touch the bottle. However, it seemed to touch him often. A rage would be awakened in him and my mother and I would constantly have scars and bruises added to our growing collection.  
  
They had known about the damage being done to my family. The neighbours, the relatives and even the church. They all knew, but just kept on pretending, lookin' the other way and such..  
  
When both my parents were deceased, I was put in the hands of the church. I spent my days in a group home run by servants of God. There were many children there, all unloved and forsaken. I remember one Priest in particular, by the name of Father Marks. His words of sympathy had been repeated so many times they had lost all meaning. I remember the looks of supposed pity I met with were glassy eyed, too inadvertent to have any time for a boy who had been falling from grace his entire life.  
  
It had been twenty years. I had expected a revolution within the church. I had expected them to, for once, give a damn.  
  
I had expected too much.  
  
But I did not let myself be disheartened. I would lift this church out of indifference.  
  
I missed my mother. She had called me 'Sweetpea'.  
  
~*~**********~*~  
  
Once every month the priest in charge of the church I was stationed at would come to visit. I had yet to meet him.  
  
Father Michaels and Father Jameson spoke highly of him, but this meant nothing to me. I had long closed my mind to their incessant ramblings and suggestions.  
  
It was three long weeks since my arrival and I had waited patiently. My mind was overflowing with concepts and ideas to better the church and to increase the people's affiliation. Past mistakes could be learned from. Redemption was on the horizon.  
  
I knew that with just one person on my side, anything was possible.  
  
The day arrived and I lingered at the door of the church to greet him.  
  
He arrived in a big car, shiny and black. And when he stepped out of his car I felt my chest tighten.  
  
He walked towards me and seemed like an age before he reached to doorway.  
  
He offered his hand to me and I shook it. I don't really know why; we needed no introduction.  
  
The man before me was Father Marks.  
  
He did not recognise me, of course. Twenty years had transformed us both, but It was him. Unmistakably.  
  
I felt my concepts and ideas lock themselves away into a dark place on my mind, never to be eventuated.  
  
I would have run then, far away. Repair my soul in some other way. But I had nowhere to go. My expectations had lured me to the pitfall.  
  
Instead I stepped inside the church and closed the heavy doors. Before the doors shut, I caught a glimpse of Father Marks' parked car. It winked in the sun.  
  
It was almost demon-like.  
  
Author's note: If you are interested in reading more Caleb, I can highly recommend 'The Lord's Work' by Shadowlass. Compelling stuff. 


	2. The Darkness

All credit to known characters goes to Joss Whedon and the many talented creators of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'. References to 'Something For Kate' and 'The Butterfly Effect' lyrics also included. No infringement intended.  
  
In this story I will delve into the mind of a homicidal maniac. Please bare with me as I try to remain true to Caleb's character, while keeping my own sanity intact.  
  
Piper Quinn  
  
WARNING: This chapter may contain material which will offend anyone with strong religious beliefs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------- Sliding Into Apathy. Chapter Two.  
  
~*~*~*********~*~*~  
  
I always did like the dark.  
  
Many people fear the dark, but to me it was a way in which I could watch the world without bein' judged. Even as a child, I would stay in a shadowed world, watching, listening, learning. Safer to see than to be seen.  
  
People are afraid of the monsters in the dark, but when you yourself are surrounded by demons who walk in the clear, bright sunshine you begin to favour beasts of darkness and imagination. Less blood will be shed, less bones will be broken and less dreams will be shattered.  
  
As my days at the church progressed into weeks, a different kind of darkness encircled me.  
  
The kind of darkness in which a person has no perception of times, places or dates. In which a person can go about their business with a blank stare and in complete hopelessness.  
  
Countless movies and books have been created about massacres in Texas, stranglers in Boston and the gutting of eighteenth century prostitutes, but I knew then of true horror.  
  
Apathy.  
  
The same glassy-eyed kind of apathy I had experienced in that God forsaken church orphanage.  
  
As much as I wanted to pull myself out of it, to refocus my perception and to resurface into affinity, I found my God given strength had been bleedin' out so quickly I hadn't even noticed until the last drop had been spilled.  
  
I asked God for a miracle then, not sure if I even had enough belief in me left to ask for anything, but I knew that I needed a godsend or I would fade into nothingness.  
  
I don't know who sent her. God, the Devil or something in between.  
  
//My miracle, my destruction, my beginning//  
  
Do you believe in fate?  
  
I don't know if things happen for a reason, or if fate itself is just something people made up to ease feelin's of guilt.  
  
'It wasn't my fault. There was nothing I could do. It was just...fate.'  
  
Sounds a whole lot better than 'I was weak. I was afraid. I just didn't care.'  
  
Maybe the concept of fate was created so people can sleep at night.  
  
All I know is that if God did send her to me, knowin' then what would happen and seein' into the future, then people have been wrong. People have been wrong about God. He sees the bleak, just as we all do and sometimes he creates it. He can be vengeful and he can hate without apparent reason. Perhaps men are more kindred to God than we have been taught to believe. Or it could just be that God had complete faith in me and I failed him.  
  
Failed him.  
  
And her.  
  
And myself.  
  
I just don't know.  
  
Nothin' can be done now. It's over. But when I look back, it does make me wonder. Don't look back often though.  
  
There's a fine line between telling a story and dwelling on the past.  
  
~*~*~**********~*~*~  
  
The church ran a Sunday School.  
  
The oldest to attend were goin' on eighteen, the youngest barely five.  
  
Didn't know whether to laugh or cry when the students were taught that everything happened for a reason, that God saved the worthy.  
  
I thought about the children who had lost parents. Were they supposed to believe that the lives lost were unworthy? That God had taken them for a reason?  
  
I tried to push thoughts of my mother out of my head.  
  
My hate grew. It was a weed inside of me; ugly and unstoppable, stranglin' everything else alive within.  
  
These children would grow to believe what was being told to them. They would grow into adults without empathy or reservation. The light in their eyes would fade to a dull glaze and I could not summon enough God-damn energy to give a fuck.  
  
~*~*~**********~*~*~  
  
She came on Sunday the 12th of August.  
  
It was on the sixth Sunday I had been there and the fifth Sunday School I had assisted.  
  
Although I am not a man who takes notice of small details, I do recall everything about the 12th of August that year.  
  
I felt her arrive, before she even walked in the door.  
  
She was complete with an ugly, pale green dress, bruises on her cheek and Father Marks' hand on her shoulder, guiding her to her seat.  
  
I felt my heart beat for the first time in what seemed like a million years. Of course it had always been beatin', but I had forgotten what it was like to actually feel it.  
  
Everything which had happened in my life, somehow led me to that church in the middle of nowhere, and right then I knew why. If everything did happen for a reason, she was it.  
  
She wasn't beautiful, hardly even pretty. She had a long face, round, brown eyes and mousy hair which was messy then, and would be every time I saw her.  
  
Her father beat her. Everyone knew, but pretended to be oblivious to the bruises. I knew the feeling well.  
  
Images of my childhood flashed through my mind.  
  
I struggled to maintain composure.  
  
~*~*~*********~*~*~  
  
I made decisions then, without noticing I was makin' them.  
  
Her father had hit her for the last time, I decided.  
  
I would persevere, I decided.  
  
It is plausible that I thought it possible to chase away my darkness's if I had a mission, or that in some way I saw myself in her.  
  
Even now, when I think back, I still don't know where my determination sprung from.  
  
I wonder now, if perhaps I knew all along what would happen.  
  
Perhaps by then, the weed had already wrapped itself around my heart and I already revelled in it's hate, but the transition had been so slow and steady I had not even perceived the change.  
  
Perhaps I knew and I smiled a dark smile inside.  
  
It wouldn't surprise me. Not even a little bit.  
  
//Laughing to death as I fall to the floor//  
  
Her name was Elizabeth.  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- 


	3. Clarity

All credit to known characters goes to Joss Whedon and the many talented creators of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'. References to 'One Night' by Margaret WILD (Not Margaret Clark, as previously suggested) also included. No infringement intended.

In this story I will delve into the mind of a homicidal maniac. Please bare with me as I try to remain true to Caleb's character, while keeping my own sanity intact. This was a particularly difficult chapter to write, hence the late posting. Piper Quinn sends her sincerest apologies. 

Also, being Australian, I have used Australian spelling in my work, some of which may be somewhat different depending on the individual reader.

Piper Quinn.

WARNING: This chapter may contain material which will offend anyone with strong religious beliefs.

_____________________________________________________________

Sliding Into Apathy. Chapter Three.

~*~*~**********~*~*~

As time goes by, people will begin to realise that this world is built with lies.

Some folks will try to tell you otherwise, but they just haven't discovered the truth. Or perhaps they have, but are too afraid to embrace the reality of it. Walk away from them, they are unknowingly forsaken.

For example, it has often been said that one should live in the moment, or the good times will just pass you by.

Lies.

Good times? Good times don't exist, there is only prelude to hate, rage and death. Although things may seem good at the time, they will only make the forthcoming darkness so much blacker in comparison.

Step into the sun, even for a moment, and you will be burnt. Stay in the shadows, however, and your eyes will adjust. Is the darkness still so terrible if it is not perceived as an actual darkness?

Important things which are discovered too late, are not any less important.

I know this now.

~*~*~**********~*~*~

There was a boarding house next to the church. It housed children who lived too far away to get to school everyday, or had parents who were not capable of lookin' after them.

The boarding house, or Rivington House as they called it, relied a great deal on the church with providin' money and support.

I used this to my utmost advantage and with my influence Elizabeth moved into the Rivington four days after her arrival. Some people looked and some whispered, but nobody did question. 

Throughout this time, I felt the weed begin to die. Lose it's death grip on my heart.

Sometimes others apathy can work in one's favour.

~*~*~**********~*~*~

It was never my intention to become involved with Rivington House in any way.

What did I want? I wanted to know I had done somethin' that mattered. Simple as that.

I visited, only for a few hours at first. Observing lessons and such.

This somehow turned into me spending most of my day there. Making sure Elizabeth was alright and in the very same motion, reclaiming my soul.

Elizabeth was one of the only two girls at Rivington over the age of fourteen. 

The other, I soon learned, was Bram. A small girl with dark eyes and darker hair.

The two soon became acquainted, so much so that their names seemed to merge. 

BramandElizabeth - friends through circumstance rather than choice, but friends non the less. Through all their similarities, they could not have been more different.

Bram. Her name meant 'raven'. And through all her beauty, I found it easy to liken her to the unscrupulous bird.

In certain lights a raven's black feathers shine metallic purple, violet. Sometimes when I caught a glimpse of Bram's dark hair, I saw the same sheen. And I knew she could see it too.

Bram was just as quiet as Elizabeth. But Bram's was a calculating silence, so very unlike her unassuming, broken friend.

But in all her silence, shrewd as it was, it became easy for me to simply place Bram into the background.

"Why is it that you and she are gettin' along so well?" I had once asked Elizabeth.

She had looked up at me, in one of her rare moments of eye contact "She knows who I am." was all I was given. I did not ask again.

BramandElizabeth.

~*~*~**********~*~*~

Since I had arrived, I had noticed that the church was used soley as a place of worship.

Other churches were filled with people seeking condolence, familiarity, or even refuge.

I knew why. What would Father Michaels and Father Jameson give them? What steps would Father Marks take to assist?

I had been there myself and knew the answers all too well.

At night I didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. 

At night the church belonged to me.

I would walk through the darkness of the chapel, thinking everythin' and nothin' at the same time. I watched shadows and listened for the unmistakable sounds of the night.

At night the world was just as I wanted it to be.

~*~*~**********~*~*~

It was a Friday night, just after eleven.

I walked into the lightless church and found Elizabeth.

She was alone, standing silently beneath the wooden crucifix which hung on the wall to the left of me.

At the time I was surprised to find her there, out of bed, out of Rivington.

Although, when I think back now it was the only place she could have been. God was all she had left.

I walked towards her willowy frame and touched her shoulder lightly, expecting her to jump.

But she didn't.

Elizabeth didn't even flinch. She didn't turn around, just tipped her head slightly towards me. It was almost as though she knew I would be there.

It was almost as though she knew everythin'.

I wanted to ask her what she was doing there, why she wasn't back as Rivington House, asleep. But I did not such thing.

Instead I kept my hand on her shoulder and stood quietly behind her as she voicelessly prayed.

I remember how her body heat spread through my hand. And how I just couldn't seem to regulate my breathing.

Without being conscious of my action, I placed my other hand on her waist.

Again, I waited for a flinch that never came.

Perhaps if Elizabeth had flinched I wouldn't have tightened my grip on her.

Wouldn't have pulled her against me.

Wouldn't have spun her around so that I could meet her gaze.

But I did. And before I realised what I was doing I had Elizabeth against the wall, so close the warmth that flooded through me was almost feverish.

I remember just how she looked at me. Not with fear or hate, not even with love, but with the utmost relief.

I didn't undress her, it would have made the situation all too real. The surrealism was the only thing that kept either of us there at that moment.

But my hands found their way underneath her dress as she wound her narrow arms around me.

And as I was fucking Elizabeth underneath that giant wooden cross all I could feel was her hands on my back and all I could see was God's faceless face directly in front of me.

But I didn't care because wasn't I doing just what I was brought here to do?

Wasn't I giving someone who was lost comfort?

Think what you will, but at that moment I felt a clarity I can not describe.


	4. Snakes

I'd like to start with a huge and overdue thank you to my reviewers (CaffeineTed, Caleb's Raven and my anonymous reviewers). Cheers! If you leave a review I will love you forever. I truly will.

I know you've heard it before... but-

All credit to known characters goes to Joss Whedon and the many talented creators of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'. References to 'One Night' by Margaret Clark also included. No infringement intended.

In this story I will delve into the mind of a homicidal maniac. Please bare with me as I try to remain true to Caleb's character, while keeping my own sanity intact. This chapter is so long overdue it's not even funny, but uni is a total bitch. Hopefully the next and final chapter won't be another victim of procrastination... but don't hold me to it.

Also, being Australian, I have used Australian spelling in my work, some of which may seem a little fucked up depending on the individual reader.

Piper Quinn.

xXx

WARNING: This chapter may contain material which will offend anyone with strong religious beliefs - that pretty much goes for the entire story actually.

**Sliding Into Apathy. Chapter Four.**

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our despair, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." - Aeschylus

All our lives we have been told that knowledge is power, that the worst thing a person can be is foolish.

But understand this; If you are not aware of the things that are hurting you, are you truly in pain?

There had been a snake coiled in waiting for me at the church, its diamond head swaying to the sound of my heart beating. But It's presence was unknown to me and therefore I had not, as of yet, feared it.

Through my life of poison, I had not yet built up a tolerance to the snake's venom.

But you are able to go on, oblivious and without fear, until the snake is recognised. It only takes one split second for the gleam of the serpent's scales to catch your eye. Knowledge of threat will hit you like a ton of bricks and you will be ever-changed.

The snake will take many forms, some unexpected and some you should have seen comin' a mile away. Either way, the inevitable bite will be scathing and the poison quick.

Monday.

Elizabeth and I had not conferred over our meeting in the dark. It was far too fragile to be spoken of aloud. I was afraid the moment would shatter, like glass.

If anyone else was to know, said moment would become something twisted and ugly. This church had the ability to break anything of beauty or purity, two things which I had only recently regained my belief in. I could not lose it now.

But my past brought me to a downfall yet again.

I had been a lonely child. Friendless and bleak. The tragedy I had grappled with during those years had filled me with a relentless darkness and it simply left no room for anythin' else.

I had deeply underestimated the impregnable cohesion of a close friendship.

I had simply been making my through the garden surrounding Rivington house, I don't even recall as to why, when I saw the blue-black gleam. Bram.

I thought nothin' of her at first, the girl had barely said two words in all the time she had been here.

But then she turned. She watching me walking past with such ardency that her dark gaze almost burned.

The tiny brunette, who had sat in corners with a painful indifference in her expression, suddenly looked at me with the intensity of the Devil himself.

It hit me like a fucking train.

She knew.

Elizabeth had told her.

_/The snake strikes/_

The panic should have set in there and then.

I was a priest. A man of God. What I had done was beyond a sin.

But all I could think of was how tainted it had become. Our secret salvation, mine and Elizabeth, had become something sleazy and vulgar. Bram did not factor into this equation, that girl was too empty, too treacherous.

I failed to understand how in all hell Elizabeth could justify bringin' her into this.

God, it made me sick.

I had been walkin' quickly, without thought as to where I was going, and when I looked up, I found myself in the church. Try as I might, I could not tear my gaze from that wooden crucifix.

Had I not been so wrapped up in my own tenebrous thoughts, I might have heard her footsteps. I might have felt her presence.

But, so help me God, I did not.

I did, however, feel her small, cold, fingers travel up my spine.

I flinched, jolted out of my daze.

In all the coldness of the moment I am repentant to say that, just for a instant, I expected to find Elizabeth behind me.

It was, of course, Bram. Her black stare burnin' into me yet again.

I opened my mouth to ask her what she was doing here, what she wanted from me, but words were impossible to form.

_Don't touch me!_ I wanted to say, but still I could not speak the words.

Her shadow had rendered me speechless.

And then...

Her hands slid up her own body slowly, coming to rest at her shoulders, where she began to slip her shirt off of her body.

She simply could not have done a worse thing.

"Stop." I found my voice then. The word echoed around the church.

She blinked, her features hardening.

_/The poison seeps into my bloodstream/_

And then she was gone, her long hair flashing behind her.

I sat on the bench beside me, it was all I could do to keep from fallin' to my knees.

My clarity was gone. Didn't Elizabeth understand? What had occured between us had given us both something to cling to, something other than the constant, desolate apathy that we faced.

You just can't share somethin' like that. There isn't enough to go around.

And even as a preacher, I knew that there was a time to be selfish.

Not even preachers can escape that human will to survive.

I could not help but wonder who else Elizabeth had told.

I didn't wonder long. The next day I received a message from Father Michaels. Father Marks wanted to see me. He was arriving first thing the next morning. It was made real clear to me that the reason he was blessin' us with his presence was the fact that there was an urgent conversation to be had between the two of us. There had been a complaint.

I nodded, thanked Father Michaels for lettin' me know, closed the door to my room and began plotting the way in which I would kill Elizabeth.


End file.
